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(This column was first published in Democratic Left.)
Greta Thunberg spoke truth to power at a massive demonstration in Glasgow, Scotland on November 6th outside the 26th annual United Nations Climate Conference. She said:
“At the current emissions rates, our remaining CO2 budgets to give us the best chances of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius will be gone within the end of this decade. And the climate and ecological crisis, of course, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is directly tied to other crises and injustices that date back to colonialism and beyond. The question we must now ask ourselves is: What is it that we are fighting for? Are we fighting to save ourselves and the living planet, or are we fighting to maintain business as usual?”
Thunberg’s words are representative of the thoughts and feelings of tens of millions of young people and older people all over the world. When it comes to the climate emergency we are now in, lies, half-truths and half-stepping just don’t cut it. It is, without question, time for system change, not climate change. What we need, therefore, is not just a movement, not just a coalition. We need a movement of movements.
But how?
The strength and breadth of the broadly-based coalition manifested in Glasgow this past week, made up of grassroots and other organizations and representatives of people’s movements around the world, is one essential aspect of the “how.” The billionaire class, the 1%, has many guns to use, literally and figuratively, to hinder the environmental, social, political…
